


Just Sustain

by AlwaysEroticWrestling, ThisGuyFvcks



Series: High Spots High [10]
Category: All Elite Wrestling, Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: M/M, Roman goes to the rival school, This one's a lil sad, probs not - Freeform, will i ever stop having shield feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:07:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21567361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlwaysEroticWrestling/pseuds/AlwaysEroticWrestling, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisGuyFvcks/pseuds/ThisGuyFvcks
Summary: Sometimes independence and loneliness are the same thing.Jon Moxley isn't close to anyone in his school. Once bitten, twice shy.
Relationships: Dean Ambrose | Jon Moxley/Roman Reigns, Dean Ambrose | Jon Moxley/Roman Reigns/Seth Rollins | Tyler Black, implied
Series: High Spots High [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536658
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23





	Just Sustain

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after Friday Night Fights, which, due to the nature of having 3 people working in the same universe, isn't done. The only thing you need to know is that Roman is a football star for Henry Harrison Highschool, HHH, and that I'm good at stupid puns.

The corner gas station was the closest thing to a grocery store this part of town had. Moxley prowled the familiar shelves of packaged snacks and considered the hot dog rack for a moment. Sometimes, as a kid, he’d pocket a candy bar here and there, when he could get away with it without old man Arn behind the counter noticing. The pockets of his leather jacket remained empty today, though, and he just went to the back where the coolers were. A twelve pack of cheap cans was enough to get the job done, and if it wasn’t he could probably come up with a bottle of whiskey from somewhere. 

“Hey Jon. Getting a case for the old man, huh? Been a while.” Mox didn’t even glance at the clerk, just put the folded bill on the counter. Arn wasn’t going to check his ID. Mox had been errand boy often enough that he didn’t give a damn.  
“Yep. Same old, same old.” He shouldered the case of cans and headed toward the door.  
“Tell him I said ‘hey’,” the elderly man behind the counter put the bill in the register.  
“I will.” He wouldn’t.  
He strapped the case to the back of his bike and he was heading off down the street in seconds. He passed a smallish house with peeling paint and a junked out mustang in the yard about a block from the railroad tracks. He didn’t even give it a passing look.  
No, he went about ten miles further up the road before he started to slow down. This was a little house with a busted fence and a sun-bleached For Rent sign stuck in the barren yard. Mox stashed his bike in the back yard out of sight from the main road and headed to the back door.  
The lock was long since broken and he left the door cracked. It just had the three rooms. Bathroom, kitchenette, and living room. The futon that was currently in couch mode was comfortable enough with a few pillows and couple of blankets folded on the end. Mox opened the fridge door and set the whole case of beer inside.  
It had half a pizza and a box of hot pockets for company, but it was good enough. There was also a stash of frozen burritos in the freezer, and the microwave on the counter worked just fine.  
Mox eyed the pizza for a long moment, but ultimately shut the door and headed to the futon. He’d almost sat down when his phone rang.  
“Hey,” he answered with familiarity. “Yeah, just park in the back.” He pocketed his phone and padded over to lean in the doorway.  
He saw headlights just as he got there, followed in short order by a black hand-me down car that sounded like it could use a tune up. There was only one occupant. He stepped out, raven black hair falling just past his broad shoulders.  
“Hey man,” He greeted with a wave. Mox couldn’t help but notice the thick lines of black peeking out from his shirt.  
“Shit. New tattoo?” He grinned for the first time in a while.  
“Finally got it done, yeah.” Roman shut the car door, revealing the bag in his other hand. “I brought takeout.”  
“Thank fucking God,” Mox breathed. The men met on the back porch, exchanging a quick embrace before Mox held the door open for him to come inside.  
Roman observed the surroundings as he put the bag of chinese food on the counter.  
“How long you been here, man…?” The quiet concern in his voice could be heard a mile away, but Mox had practice in ignoring these things.  
“Couple months. T’s working out fine.” He bent over to extract a couple cans from the fridge. He could feel Roman’s eyes on him, and he could hear everything he wanted to say but was managing to keep his mouth shut on. Mox counted the silence as a blessing and grabbed a styrofoam box, some plastic utensils, and lead the way into the living room.  
“Alright. Let me see it, before we get started.” Mox nodded to his arm.  
Roman just laughed.  
“C’mon, man, two seconds here…” He put his food down and gingerly tugged off his t-shirt and dropped it on the futon. The piece went from around his collar bone to just where his shirt sleeve cut off.  
“How long’d it take?” Mox asked curiously, leaning over to examine the intricate dark lines. He gave into the compulsion to touch it, gently running a finger over one of the thicker raised lines. Roman puffed out a breath that sounded like a wince and Mox retracted his hand.  
“About seventeen hours. Hurt like a bitch, too.” He retrieved his shirt and carefully put it back on. “Still got a long ways to go before it’s done.” Mox gave him a lopsided grin, and was met with a colgate white smile in kind. They laughed, and Mox opened one of the cans and handed it over before doing the same to his own.

They say down, and for a few minutes and a couple beers it was just small talk between bites. They both devoured the takeout in the way only hungry teenaged boys could, snatching bites from each others’ containers with an easy familiarity.  
“Heard you kicked ass at the game the other day.” Mox said around an eggroll he was eternally grateful for.  
“You could’ve seen it if you’d gone, y’know.” Roman cut his eyes at him, but there was humor in the barb. “There was uh. A scout there, actually.” He looked at his chow mein and pushed it around with a fork. “Says I’ve got a pretty good shot at getting recruited.”  
Mox nodded and chewed.  
“That’s great… You know where yet?”  
“It’d be out east. Florida probably.” Silence settled over them for a pause, and Mox found himself wishing he’d sprung for that TV that guy tried to sell him to give them a little white noise to focus on.  
“Look at you, big shot. Gonna be a Gator. You’ve earned it.” He bumped his shoulder gently into Romans, and Roman was happy it wasn’t the freshly mangled one.  
“Seriously, man. No one deserves it more.” Mox gave him another real smile and sat what remained of his food aside.  
“Thanks man. It’s a lot but… Yeah. Thanks.” Roman did the same and lounged back deeper into the futon. “...You know you don’t have to be here, right?”  
Mox had polished off his second beer by now, and was just toying with the tab with his thumb. He didn’t say anything. Roman took it as an invitation to continue.  
“There’s room at my place. My mom, she’d be fine with it…”  
“Your mom hates me,” Mox corrected, looking at Roman for the first time since they’d finished eating. “It’s fine. Really. It’s just until they let me quit, then I can work full time and I’ll get an actual place and-”  
“It’s not ‘quitting,’ Jon, it’s dropping out. Dropping out. You don’t need to do that.” The softness in his voice had lessened some. “It’s not like you’re stupid. You could do whatever you want. Go anywhere.”  
“It’s not for me. It just. Isn’t, alright? I’m skating by this year, and it’s done...I’m getting another beer.” Mostly just as an excuse to put some distance between them for a moment.  
He spent a long time staring into the open, mostly empty fridge.

“He’d come if you called, y’know.”

Jon glared at the pizza box before snatching up a couple more cans. He pretended not to hear it. “He misses you. He’s just. Not great at saying that with words.”  
Mox just stayed in the kitchen, taking a long drink.  
“Kinda seems like it’s a theme, actually,” Roman said flatly when it was clear he was talking to himself.  
“He knows exactly how to get ahold of me if he wants to.” Mox handed off another beer to him before sitting heavily on the futon again. The air had weight to it, all the levity of catching up had dispersed and they were just here, in a little living room that was probably a bit too dark and just bordering on cold.  
Mox felt his shoulders slump. And then a warm weight was pressed right up against his side.  
“I was at your stupid game, meat-head,” Mox muttered, putting his feet up on the couch and cozying in.  
“Yeah. I know man. Saw your bike by the fence,” Roman grinned and tugged a blanket over both of them and pulled out his phone.  
“Kinda ghetto but hey, it’s still movie night.” He thumbed through Netflix and settled on some B action movie.  
“Hey. Isn’t that guy your cousin….?” 

For the first time in a very long time, Mox woke up slow, and warm, and late into the morning. He hadn’t even realized that he’d fallen asleep, and it was the first time since before he’d left home that he slept the night through. That was a pretty impressive feat considering that every four seconds or so there was a warm breath puffing right against his neck.  
“Shit,” he muttered, glancing down at the strong, half-tattooed arm over his chest.  
“Alright. Wake up, big dog. M arm’s numb and I really gotta piss.”  
Roman could sleep like the dead. Almost anywhere. Including a futon that hadn’t been folded out half on top of him. But at least he did finally open a bleary eye.  
“What time is it?” Roman sat up, dark hair arranged in messy waves that anyone would covet.  
“It is nine-thirty.” Mox flexed blood back to his fingers and stood up to stretch his spine.  
“Oh hell.” Roman’s dark brows dipped in a very brief frown. Then he laughed.  
“I gotta go. It’s going to be my ass if I’m late.”  
“Got news for ya. You live an hour away, Ro. You are already late,” Jon smiled and excused himself as intended. Fifteen minutes of waking up and getting a few bites of cold Chinese food in him later, Roman was headed out the back door, with Mox at his heels. Before he got too far, though, he turned around.  
“Let’s not wait so long to do this again next time, huh?”  
Mox’s shoulders slumped a little.  
“Yeah. Course. Anytime…”  
Roman took the initiative to pull him into a hug, but Mox wasn’t going to be the one to break it once he was there. It felt too damned good to have his face tucked against that stupid familiar shoulder.  
It just about broke him.  
But it didn’t. They said their goodbyes, and Roman drove away.  
And Jon turned back to the house he was squatting in, and felt a hell of a lot colder than he had just a few minutes before.  
He brushed his teeth, swallowed down a beer, and headed off to the garage he spent all of his Saturdays in.


End file.
